PHARMACOLOGY

 MOLECULAR PHARMACOLOGY 

If one looks into the history of pharmacology it becomes apparent that the subject of pharmacology evolved with the understanding of mechanisms of action of drugs Major break through had been the introduction of the term Receptor by Langley explaining the drug -receptor interaction based on Law of Mass Action by Clarke Gaddum and others and then visualizing the receptors as biochemical entities in the 1970s pharmacology entered a new phase when receptors could be studied by radiolabelling experiments it was then possible to extract and purify the radioactive labelled receptor material During the same period with the advancement of analytical techniques biotechnology and immunology several molecules and molecular mechanisms could be identified to understand the mechanism at cellular and molecular level This is nothing but development of a separate but undissociable discipline in pharmacology i.e. Molecular Pharmacology

 

        Molecular Pharmacology is the study of general principles of drug actions in relation to the molecules that are involved in recognising chemical signals and translating them into cellular responses Advances in molecular pharmacology have not only changed our understanding of drug action but they have also opened many new therapeutic possibilities like gene therapy The description of molecular pharmacology is beyond the scope of a single chapter however in this chapter some general principles of drug receptor interaction as related to signal transduction mechanisms will be discussed